


New Hair, New You

by yosjiefo



Category: Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, my personal headcanon on how tine got her canon twintail hairstyle, pregame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:36:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29543184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yosjiefo/pseuds/yosjiefo
Summary: A young Febail learns that his new liege lord's niece feels utter despair with each time someone compares her to the Empress, and so he decides to do something about it.
Relationships: Teeny | Tine & Faval | Febail
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	New Hair, New You

**Author's Note:**

> An extremely headcanon-dependent one-shot. The only thing you really need to know for this to work is I headcanon that when Febail left Conote to find mercenary work, he was taken in as an in-house assassin for House Friege, hence why I'm having him interact with Tine pregame here.

“C'mere. I’ll help.” Febail pats the chair he’s leaning on from behind, unsure how the Friege girl would respond to him. Perhaps this wasn’t his place to be suggesting anything; after all, she was the niece of a king, and he, just the new hire for the family. However, when he sees her hide behind her older cousin, he knows he sees her not for her status but rather the scared, little girl she is underneath all of those frilly dresses. 

He’s always been bad at looking away from a younger peer in need of help. 

Tine’s as timid as he expects her to be. She looks so uncertain about the invitation, eyes darting back and forth between the chair and him. She turns her head then, to look for silent advice from someone else in the room, but here they are alone — neither King Bloom nor Princess Ishtar in sight. 

“…You don’t like people comparing you to the Empress, right?” he tries again, pulling back a memory from the recesses of his mind. Tine whips her head back to him, eyes wide. She looks not unlike a doe then, and Febail needs to suppress the urge to chortle. If he does, she’ll run off, scared of him surely. 

Instead, he merely pats the chair again. “I can help stop that, but only if you sit.” A gentle scold. He’s talking to her like he would one of the girls from home, but he can’t help it. After all, that is what drew him to her; it’s what spurred him to action. 

He waits with bated breath until at last she takes a seat, shutting her eyes tightly. A moment passes, and then another, and with the air completely still, the tension finally shatters as she slowly opens her eyes again. 

“What was that for?” Febail asks, raising an eyebrow. He sees her flinch, but she stays. Her fingers intertwine nervously with one another, and she cannot bring herself to look up at him directly nor through the mirror placed in front of her seat, but at last, she wills herself to speak. 

“I… I thought you might… I don’t know.” 

“Hm?” 

“Hurt me!” 

It is his turn now to be the one taken aback with surprise. For the few times he has heard her speak, he has always characterized it as nothing higher than a whisper. Sometimes, he has to strain himself to hear her. But no, not now. He hears her loud and clear, and it is a shrill cry. 

He considers then hugging her in the hopes it might abate her fears. That’s what one of the kids back home would’ve wanted. But he doesn’t know Tine very well. She’s scared enough to just be sitting in front of him. Will she think he’s going to really, truly hurt her if he so much as touches her? 

What has she seen? What goes on behind closed walls within the Friege household? 

It’s not his story to know, he knows. Do something wrong with one of their members, and he can kiss all that money goodbye. He needs this job, and he needs this household to be the one to provide it. They’re the ones who took him in so quickly; who knows if another will take him if these people were to abandon him? 

He can’t do that to Conote. 

But what he can do for Tine is alleviate her worries just a little. “I won’t hurt you.” 

He holds up his pinky. She startles him by taking his with her own. Her grip is barely anything at all, but the touch is definitely there. 

“Promise?” 

“…Yeah. Promise.” 

He lets her be the one to let go first before his fingers move to her long, silver locks. They cascade down in waves, and while he doesn’t know what the Empress looked like, he guesses she must’ve worn this kind of hair. It’s the first thing he noticed about Tine, and it would be a sight that he would only let live in his memory from now on. 

Dexterous hands part her hair and for a moment, he begins to separate them into thirds, but his hands freeze. 

No, if he does this, he’ll just be making her look like his sister. If Tine was so upset at being likened to the Empress, then surely the thing to make her be able to walk with her head held high would be her own look, so far apart from anyone else on Jugdral. 

“Hold on,” he warns as he changes the plan. Two halves, a lift, a twist, and then a wrap with a pretty, red ribbon. Twist and wrap. Repeat. Before he knows it, he’s creating something completely unlike anything he’s ever done, and in the end, Tine’s look is two heavily wound pigtails. 

He stares at the finished product in the mirror, frowning as he’s trying to figure out how he feels about it. Before he can pass his own verdict though, Tine looks up and gasps. 

“Is that… me? Really me?” 

“Y-Yeah.” The longer he stares through the reflection, the more he’s unsure of it. “Look. If you want me to ch—” 

“Wow…” 

Her awe robs him of the ability to finish his sentence, and he’s still a bit dumbfounded when she turns in her seat. If he wasn’t prepared for that, then he is surely sorely unprepared for the smile she offers him then. 

He hasn’t known her long, but he wants to believe this one is real. Even if it’s not, he’s willing to let himself be tricked into believing it is. It is all-encompassing in its brightness, he thinks it’s a shame that she’s been spending all these days walking around with a shadow cast over her. 

“I really don’t look like myself anymore.”  


Febail shakes his head. “No, you just don’t look like the Empress no more.” 

A pause. Uncertainty. But then the light blooms again in her expression as she nods ever so slightly. “Mm. I see.” 

“C’mon. I’ll show you how to do this yourself then.” He unwinds her ribbons and lets her hair fall into their streams of silver once more, with the prayer that his work in this moment will do some long-lasting good after all. 


End file.
